Women Keep Tripping and Falling at my feet... Is this weird as I am a monster?

Stray Truths is a satirical and humorous look at the Conan Exiles roleplaying community, in the style of Dear Abby and other advice columns and radio shows.

So join us as our host, Stray Cat, breaks the fourth wall to give advice to characters running around the map, oblivious to the powers behind them—and all the drama that unfolds as their players pull the strings.

In this episode, Stray Cat helps a chimera who’s confused about whether he’s a terrifying monster or a fuckboy, a barbarian abandoned in captivity, and a propaganda campaign that could only exist on a hub notice board—among others.

The opinions expressed here are meant as a light, comedic take to help us all see the humor in things, not as an attack on anyone.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Awake, but at what cost? Welcome to Stray Trues with Stray Cat, where I, for no particular reason I can discern except a neat voice and a sense of humor, address amusing letters handed to me by the exiled voices staff and community on a broad range of topics. Very few of them are appropriates, some of them are ridiculous, one or two of them are possible war crimes or violations of the Geneva Convention. Or at least they are probably banable. But when has Conan role playing ever asked to be sane or even vaguely healthy? This morning we're looking at four stories, two longer, more like short stories really, and two shorter, provided to us by Mr. Jeff Goldblum at personal insistence because it was frankly funny as fuck. Some of them might even be true. Maybe. Let's roll into it.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Another letter from a weary soul feeling something they can't quite control. The story ships, the motors for a silent puppet pulling strings for sure. Those unseen forces we must unravel. Welcome to Stray Truths with Stray Cats.

SPEAKER_01 1:22

Dear Stray Cats, I have been taken captive by a sorcerer. I don't know how long I've been here. Weeks, I think, but it is dark and there are no windows, so I cannot track the days. Today started like any other. I woke up bright and early around noon, cleansed myself in the nearby river, and brought myself to the local tavern to spend my hard earned coin. And like every proper pub outing, it ended in a brawl. I should have known that it would end poorly. It always does. I was not expecting that shortly after throwing a man through a table, a sorcerer would appear in a swirl of robes and smoke, point his bony finger in my general direction, and declare that fate had delivered me into his hands. One rarely hears such confident speeches outside of kings and drunk poets. I was impressed at the time. I always knew that I was special, but this was the first time that somebody was ranting about grand designs and not talking about me hitting somebody. I do not remember how he beat me. I like to think that he cast some spell to contain me, but I was drunk, and someone had hit me with a chair before that. So it's entirely possible I fell over all on my own. He found my hands of chains, dragged me from the tavern floor, and carried me to his tower, all while explaining that the destiny of kingdoms might hinge upon what he planned to do with me afterwards. Naturally, I expected an interrogation. Or torture. Possibly sacrifice to some dreadful god. Instead, he chained me to the wall of a cellar, lit a torch, and told me to prepare myself for what was to come. Then he left. That was the last I saw of him. At first, I assumed he was gathering his instruments, knives, scrolls, sacrificial bowls, that sort of thing. I spent several hours rehearsing insults and defiant speeches for when he returned. Some were even fairly witty. But the hours became a day, the day became a week. The torch burned out forever ago. I discovered that if I lean far enough to the left, I can see a thin beam of light through a crack in the stones. Which is how I now guess at time. A rat has taken up residence near my feet. I've named him Baron, and he appears to be the only authority figure currently attending to my case. He has grown quite comfortable here, and I suspect he believes this tower now belongs to him. Occasionally I hear movement above doors opening, chairs scraping. Once what sounded like a man shouting dramatically about destiny, but no one has come down to the cellar. I've shouted several times to remind them I'm here. Once I coughed very loudly, and rattled my chains for emphasis. Still nothing. Now I'm thinking that the sorcerer simply forgot about me. Some destiny. On the one hand, I am a captive, and my ancestors would find it dishonorable to simply leave without first resolving matters with the sorcerer. On the other hand, if a man captures you and then wanders off for several weeks, it begins to feel less like imprisonment and more like really poor management skills. I could leave easily. These chains are old, rusted, and if I eat barren, I should have the energy to break them. But I worry this might ruin whatever grand plan I was meant to be part of, and being special sounds nice. So I ask you, Spray Cat, wise voice of the exiled lands, how long is a man expected to wait in captivity before he may reasonably assume that the sorcerer has lost interest? And if I do leave, should I clean the cellar first? Sent by a barbarian who is tired of waiting. Okay, well, first off, don't eat Baron. Baron is your only friend in the entire world right now, and you have been relying on him for emotional support. You do not eat the emotional support rat. That's basically like step one of all of this. Just keep the rat near you at all times, because this is your conversational partner. Alright, so take a very, very long look at this rat and understand that it has suffered with you. Now that we've done that, unfortunately the players happens. It's very frequent that these servers will have rules about if you capture somebody, if you're even allowed to capture somebody, because a lot of servers don't do that. Usually the maximum time load is a day. Back when I was on Tales of Tamaril, if they didn't log in within an hour or so of you logging in and just sitting there, because nobody wants you to sit in jail, right? Except for the people who captured you who are apparently jerks. There's a certain amount of time that's reasonable and there's a certain amount of time that's not. Now, if you're playing somewhere like Severance, where it's like, haha, you know, like wink, wink, nudge, nudge, you are now my prisoner, and you're sort of there voluntarily, then I mean, work it out with whoever the fuck puts you there. But generally, a captive is temporarily part of the faction. Even if it's not like the lewd sort of capture, there's still some sort of expectation there that it's going to be worth the time that the captive is putting into it. Whether you're the captor there or you're the person who's been captured, you know, if you don't really want to be there and nobody's paying attention to you, leave the trash, take the rat. Because your time is valuable. You really shouldn't be spending it where people aren't really paying attention to you, where people don't really want to roleplay with you. And just being like a law of action or something isn't really an excuse to cut people out of RP. People we'll we'll talk about about the idea of punishing the player versus punishing the character. So, for instance, if your character is a thief as in this upcoming story, then try and let them off with a fine or something if you know that you're not going to be able to interact with them very much. Personally, I've found that people part more easily with their time than their money. Just small personal stray cat opinion there. But anyway, we'll go on to the next story. Dear Stray Cat, yesterday I was arrested by the city guard. Now, under ordinary circumstances, this would be unremarkable. But from time to time I have been involved in situations that the law might describe as unfortunate misunderstandings involving locked doors and unsecured coin. However, yesterday's arrest has left me deeply confused. You see, at the time I was disguised as a peasant. Not poorly disguised, mind you. I had taken great care with the matter. I wore rough spun clothes, rubbed dirt through my hair, walked with a slight stoop, and carried a sack of onions to complete the illusion. I even practiced the blank sun weary expression common among farmers who have spent their lives staring at fields and hoping the weather does not argue with them. The reason for this disguise was very simple. Early in the morning, there had been an incident involving a magistrate's coin chess and my professional curiosity. Naturally I wished to avoid recognition. My plan was elegant. Blend into the marketplace as a humble onion cellar, wait for the excitement to settle, and then leave the city. Unfortunately, within minutes of entering the market square, two guards approached me. One of them raised a hand. You there stop. Naturally, I assumed the worst. I briefly considered running, but running tends to attract attention, and attention was the very thing I was trying to avoid. So instead I stood there doing my best impression of a man whose greatest ambition in life was to sell vegetables. The guard stepped closer and squinted. Something about you seems suspicious. At that moment, I was certain the magistrate had already discovered the missing coin and my private life as a free man was about to end in a very public hanging. Instead he gestured toward my face. That look. I blink. What look? The one that you are making, he said. You look unfriendly. For several moments I simply stared at him. After carefully robbing a magistrate, disguising myself, and navigating the market without drawing attention, I had finally been caught for looking slightly irritated. I explained in my most humble voice that I was merely a poor onion seller, coming to market and that onions often cause a man to squint. The guards considered this explanation thoughtfully. They arrested me anyway, then they placed me in irons and marched me across the square while merchants began whispering about what terrible crime I must have committed. I was put in the stocks while the guard captain delivered a speech to his men about the importance of vigilance and protecting honest citizens from suspicious individuals. During the speech, a pickpocket, who I happened to recognize professionally, worked his way calmly through the gathered crowd. He relieved three citizens their purses about the time the captain started talking about justice. Once he'd finished, he casually passed behind the captain and slipped a small coin purse into his hand. The captain weighed the purse thoughtfully, then resumed speaking about civic duty. Eventually the guards decided that my suspicious demeanor could no longer be tolerated. Caps declared that such behavior was often the mark of thief, and before I could point out the irony of the statement, they cut off my hand. Stray cat, this has left me with several questions. First, if the reason for my arrest was that I looked suspicious, why was I punished for the crime of thievery? Second, if they were truly so concerned about thieves, why was the man robbing the crowd allowed to walk away immediately after paying the captain? And finally, though I realize this may be the least important matter, how exactly am I supposed to carry onions now? A man who wishes to remain anonymous for entirely unrelated reasons. Okay, little brother, if you aren't crying over the loss of your hand, you shouldn't be crying over the loss of onions. Your onion carrying days are over. I'm very, very sorry to tell you. And I don't mean to challenge your worldview here, but when you have a nameplate hanging over your head, some people tend to look askance at that. No matter what you happen to be wearing at the time. This problem has layers, very much like your onions. Magic. Bullshit magic. Possibly Discord-related voice magic. First layer is that they weren't really concerned about thieves. They were concerned about thieves that make them look bad. Welcome to Pride Gaming 101, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, it's not that you're a thief. It's that you stole from them. They're in a faction, they have a discord, they can talk to each other. Alright. So consider it to be some sort of magical, illegal, horrible scrying spell, the likes of which has not been seen on the face of Conan Exiles since the dawn of time, although it's literally in every single server you're ever going to play on. So, real talk. How do you deal with this? Metagaming 101, cover your ass, ladies and gentlemen. Keep logs, keep notes, keep whatever you can keep. Because if you run into something like that where you think that you're getting targeted by another player unfairly, or that they know something they really shouldn't know, you need those and some sacrifice, divine entities of insert fantasy roleplay server here. I've been accused of metagaming myself a couple of times, and having the logs really helped to clear my own good name. Hell, I even got an apology once, which is the rarest of commodities in the Conan community. Rarer, maybe, than a straight male. I mean, seriously, girls can get really vicious over that shit. As for social roles, it might not get you out of everything, but it at least shows you're taking the mechanic seriously. There's also some minor nepotism at work here, but the next story is where we're going to touch on that one. Right now, just know that people who are out of character friends will usually support each other, even if they're not necessarily in the same faction. And bribery is a thing. Get better at bribery, maybe. Personally, I'm not entirely certain that a server could survive without this type of thing. Trying to avoid it completely is a bit of a recipe for disaster. I was on an ADD Neverwin Our Nights server once. I'm old, I know, but the guy that was running it was so very gung-ho about this that he wouldn't even allow people to understand the rules of ADD. He actively discouraged people even talking about dice or rolls or anything like that on an out-of-character perspective. And he ended up hiding all the class advancement in PCs. So I mean, on the spectrum of like that to like most of the Conan roleplay servers we're seeing here, usually it's fairly mild. Just keep notes. Just try to smile through the horrible pain and unfortunate longing. And make some friends. Alright. Rolling into the next story. Dear stray cats, I write to you because my clan has discovered that dreams are apparently stronger than walls. Several months ago we settled a ridge near the river. It is good land by the standards of exiled lands, stone enough to build with, water close enough to keep men alive, and a slope that lets you see trouble coming before it arrives. We quarried the stone ourselves, hauled it up the ridge, built the walls one block at a time. Two of my men lie buried because the work of building in this land tends to attract attention. It was hard work, but we made the place ours. Several weeks after the walls were finished, another clan appeared in the valley and informed us that the ridge belonged to them. Naturally, we asked how they'd reached this conclusion. Their leader explained that he had received a vision. Apparently one night while sleeping beside a campfire somewhere in the hills, he dreamed that a great hawk circled above a stone ridge near a river. In the dream, the hawk cried out that this land was the destiny of his people. The next morning he awoke and realized the dream had clearly been a divine message, so they marched into the valley to claim their destined homeland. Stray cat. I do not wish to insult the gods. They're known to be temperamental. Isn't that the fucking truth? But I must admit I found it difficult to abandon a fortress built over several months because a man had an interesting night's sleep. We declined to move. They attacked. The first battle was brief. They charged the ridge, shouting about destiny and divine signs. By sunset they were retreating into the hills, for our men were still standing on the same ground they'd started on. The following morning we rode into town expecting to trade some captured gear. Instead, we discovered the war had moved somewhere unexpected. The public notice board in the market square had a proclamation from our enemies. Dinotis explained that the ridge had been revealed to their leader in a sacred dream, and therefore belonged to his people by divine destiny. It went on to say that our clan had chosen to ignore the will of the gods and upon and occupy land that was clearly meant for others. Their retreat from the battle, Dinotis said, had been an act of restraint. They had chosen not to slaughter us outright. At the time, we found this very amusing. Unfortunately, the townsfolk did not entirely share our humor. A priest reading the message board remarked that dreams can indeed carry messages from the gods. A merchant observed that destiny often arrives in unexpected ways. Someone asked whether we had considered that the ridge might truly be meant for them, that we considered many things when building our fortress. None of them involved somebody else's dreams. Still, we assumed the next battle would quiet the stories. Instead, the notices continued. After the second battle where we drove them off again and seized several wagons of their supplies, the board held a new proclamation explaining that the loss had been a sacred trial, meant to test the faith of their warriors while destiny unfolded. More troubling, people began repeating the idea. A fisherman in the market said it was unwise to stand against prophecy. A Mason remarked that perhaps we should consider negotiating rather than resisting fate. By the third battle, the dream had grown quite impressive. We defeated them again, their commander fell the field without his helmet. The notice, posted that evening, explained that his retreat had been a necessary step in the divine plan, allowing the prophecy to advance toward its final fulfillment. Someone beneath the notices wrote that destiny often requires sacrifice. Another asked how long we had intended to stand in the way of what the gods had clearly ordained. Stray cat. I had not previously realized that a single dream could improve so dramatically with each defeat. Then came last night. We marched on the fortress. It was a crude place of timber and stubborn optimism. We smashed the gate, burned the towers, and left the whole thing collapsing into ash while their warriors fled the field. By dawn there was nothing left of their stronghold but smoke. Naturally, we assumed the matter finished. Instead, we rode into town and found the notice board covered with fresh proclamations. According to the leader, the destruction of their fortress was the final confirmation of the prophecy. Destiny, he explained, had required them to sacrifice their stronghold so that the true struggle for the ridge could begin. The notice declared that our clan had grown desperate because we knew the land was never truly ours. People believe it. A merchant refused to sell us grain yesterday. A blacksmith declined to repair our armor. Two of my warriors returned away from the tavern because the patrons did not wish to share ale with men who stood in the way of divine will. This morning a boy shouted after us in the street. The ridge would soon belong to its rightful dreamers. Stray Cat. We built the fortress with our own hands. Yet half the townfolk believe that we are the villains for refusing to surrender it to a man who dreams about a hawk. We have won every battle in the field, but according to the Nose Board, we are losing a war against a dream, so I asked you, how does this man argue with destiny when destiny arrives several weeks after the walls are finished? And if a dream can make a place in somebody else's homeland, what exactly did we build all those walls for? Letter was sent by Haldor Iron Fist. Okay, so first off, check that you're not in a Kintaro Myera novel, because that whole white hawk thing, yeah, get the fuck out of its way really, really quickly. I know that's not a spoiler because it's been I don't know how long since Berters came out, but yeah, dude, you're definitely badending yourself at this point. Second, you built the walls because they're easier to fight from. That's very logical, very reasonable, very easy. You argue with destiny exactly as you are doing with cold, hard steel. No, seriously. There's a reason that people going back to Hubsville and talking about minuscule armor and weapon details and things like meta builds, but that's the problem, right? Because if they can't beat you fairly, they're gonna try to out-drama you. Drama, after all, is the fuel that Conan, any role-playing server really, operates off of. Usually, this means creating engaging stories for other people. Sometimes it can mean scratching your head in confusion and wondering where walking Dorito chip John Conan came up with the idea that he is God's gift to the exiled lands. So obviously they took the nose forwards, which is both really good and really bad. At least you know what they're thinking. Unfortunately, what they're thinking is often completely divorced from reality. You notice this type of shit often in particular fantasy servers. I'm not gonna call any of them out Halcyon Crossroads, or you know, really any server that doesn't have any real permanent consequences. You're gonna hear me hammer home consequences a lot in this particular rant, and it is a rant, bear you in mind, but please just bear with me. So main character syndrome is rampant in some places, right? The only real cure to that is talk shit, get hit. Right? Part of the problem that you're running into is that even though you can beat these people repeatedly, they don't actually suffer any consequence for that defeat, is what's allowing them to do this. Like they they go to the message board and they type this and they say, We didn't actually lose, we are eventually going to win. So obviously, like you guys are kicking the shit out of them. But you know, they're not actually deterred by any of that, right? But a lot of servers don't actually impose consequences of any meaningful way. Uh one place I've seen this done really well, I know I've said this before in the actual feedback forms. The only server I've really seen this done well in is Severance. And all right, bear with me. I know, take a deep breath, it's slightly corny, but it has codified consequences if you've Lose, there are numbers that go down. And numbers are like the neuron activation for a certain type of player, right? They get very, very anxious, very angry about it. Oh no, I'm not the perfect amazing John Conan Dorito man. Where did my broad shoulders go? So how do you counter this? Personally, I would come up with a better narrative. Get your own God. No joke. Whether God is a euphemism for like your own DM pet. Oh god. God damn, we're gonna go into that. Okay, slight sidebar. So I used to be part of this community that was this like running joke that you had to have a DM pet within your faction. You would take the plot and you would keep it very close to yourself, whatever plot you happen to be doing. And then you would have the DM pet that the DM likes. And then you would every single time you would be doing anything of any importance, you would shove the DM pet out in front. Maybe it's even the DM pet that's posting on the nose board, who knows? Right? But you'd shove them out in front as kind of like a smokescreen for the shit you were actually doing in the back. Because the back is like straight up power gaming, ladies and gentlemen, right? You'd have that going. And then that was your sacrifice, is like that would be the useless person that's just nice and pretty and and whatever, and maybe the DMs are ERPing with them. It doesn't matter. You just need that person. You put them out there, and then you're you're covered, you're free. God is on your side, right? The hawk has come to you. And clearly that's not what you should be doing. It's this is unfortunately, I think that there's a little bit of truth in the joke. Because if the DMs are allowing them to do that to you, I it's not your fault. This is not something you're doing. It's definitely either a problem with the system or a problem with the people administrating it. There's a lot written about that elsewhere. I'm not gonna dump down that rabbit hole. Alright, so thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Next story. Dear Stray Cat, I'm a chimera. Minotaur, bird, and dragon all stitched together. I roam about the lands consuming the flesh of men, women, and monsters, you name it. However, lately I have noticed a strange occurrence. One night while bathing, somebody sketched a picture of me and posted it on the notice board. It shared that my privates are equestrian in nature. Since then, women of all races have begun tripping and falling in front of me. They toss away their weapons and begin to beg in a strange, husky voice, asking that I don't get too rough with them. Normally, the pleas involve not being eaten. What do they even mean? I've also noticed a drastic increase in letters to my cave. Women send the artwork of themselves, half dressed or entirely naked, with directions to their keep. They challenge me to break down their gates and ravage them in a bestial manner, often in graphic descriptive detail of what they absolutely would not want me to do with them once I've defeated the warriors. Stray cat. These women scare me. Once I was the most terrifying being in the land, now I'm suddenly very popular. Should I continue my life of eating people and breaking down castle walls? Am I doing something wrong? Respectfully, local monster. First off, I need to see in pictures. Second, ah yes. The traditional trip and fall girls. You're not doing anything wrong. You're just running into extremely horny Conan players. Yeah, no. Okay. So Probably entirely too many of us are monster fuckers. That's probably what this is. So in almost every server that I've ever been on, I'll just I'll just address this straight out because it's a short story. There has always been this sort of dichotomy between people who want to treat it very, very seriously. This is a crazy monster thing, and you should definitely be killing it. And then there's people who look at that and think, man, I I saw that on Rule 34 somewhere. That's always a very interesting argument to watch. Personally, I think that if you include Minotaurs in particular in your lineup of monsters on your server, you're that kind of server. Alright, just stop arguing about it. This is like Halcyon in the early days. Just shit, it's gonna happen. You already know it's gonna happen. Everybody's been been through this at some point or another. Although I am absolutely 100% sure that somewhere out there in the big, walk, broad, wide, broad-shouldered world, there is somebody who genuinely wants to play a Minotaur in the ancient sense of guarding some sort of maze, cave, something, and then horrifically destroying things. I haven't met them yet. So I mean in the meantime, just enjoy all of the free sketchbourne, I guess. Next story. Dear Stray Cat, I am a knight of a prestigious order, defender of the realms of men against the evils of the world. I fight horrid barbarious tribes, the undead, sorcerers. You name the evil and I shall fight it. But lately I've noticed that my services have become less and less desired. Once my knightly order and I besieged the slave market, defeated the human traffickers and released the men and women in chains. Yet instead of praise, which, mind you, is not something I ever expect, I received scowls and anger. Many of the slaves grew angry at us for daring to rescue them and instead rose up to defend their captors. I was perplexed. I have never experienced such a strange reaction to being rescued, so I did what anyone should do when in a strange situation, ask somebody who's been in the spot before. I reached out to some veteran knights and they told me that this is not uncommon. My mentor, Sir John Goodman, gave me this advice. A white knight is a thankless calling, but if we did not rescue people, who would? I've mounted several rescues since then being given that advice pardon me. I've mounted several rescues since being given that advice, yet the same outcome remains. Captives are angry that they have been rescued from sorcerers, cultists, slavers, and it is wearing heavy on the men in my order. What should we do? With regards, Sir John White Harrow of the Order of Shining Steel. Have you checked that there isn't a Minotaur bird dragging chimera in the immediate area? That might have something to do with it. Second. Jesus, where do I fucking start? So you can you can lead a horse to water, but it's not gonna drown itself. There are a lot of people out there who very artistically are going to send a bunch of sketches to some extremely sketchy monsters. And those people do not need a white knight. They need a psychologist, and possibly to drink more water. They have to consent to being saved, unfortunately. The the trick is, the real trick here, is not being the guy on the gate when the monster comes knocking, right? Because you're gonna waste a lot of potions, you're gonna waste a lot of your time, your effort, and frankly your sanity attempting to keep Big to the Elf Girl number 342 from unfortunately and inevitably tripping and falling in front of bad boy number 3427. Bonus points if he's shaped like a Dorito, extra bonus points if his name is John Conan, and extra extra bonus points if uh you've been keeping track of the bingo card there. So my personal advice to you would be to find somewhere fairly high and start looking for harpies. Harpies are like the the gender opposite of Minotaurs. You're gonna have slightly more success rescuing them, I think, than than the elves. Have fun. Don't tell them I sent you. That's all for me today. If you've got your own letters, bullshit stories, or some sort of out-of-character problem you want the exile voice's staff to turn into some fourth wall breaking nonsense, open a ticket on our Discord and shoot it over along with any suspicious sketches associated. We love to see it. I'm going to wander back off now, so I'll see you next time, ladies, gentlemen, and friendly monsters on Stray Trues. Bye bye.